Five years in Italy have taught me things my father never learned. How to wait. How to plan. How to leash the violence inside me and let it off the chain only when it serves a purpose. I’ve learned to be clever, to be patient, to smile at men I want to kill and shake hands with men I’ll destroy.
Nico stubs out his cigarette and leans forward. “Va tutto bene?” Everything okay?
I can still feel the phantom ache in my jaw where Dad’s Montoni signet ring split my skin.No son of mine is going to shame this family over the daughter of the hired help.
The daughter of the hired help.
I should have killed him for that, but my heart was already dead. I lost Mina before my father ever sent me away because I was a stupid, reckless boy.
But I’ve changed since then. I’ve learned control. I’ve learned patience. I’ve learned to keep the monster on a leash.
At least, I think I have. I thought I could control myself when I was nineteen, but it turns out, I couldn’t.
She feared me.
Oh, how she feared me.
She flinched and whimpered and wept.
Mina, you’re mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. You just have to stay with me, and I’ll fix everything, I promise. I’ll show you how happy we can be. Stop struggling. I’ll show you. Why won’t you let me show you?
“Boss?” Nico prompts again.
I blink. The sun is warm. The coffee is gone. My father is dead, and everything I was promised from birth is finally mine for the taking. I’ll go back for the empire. For the casinos, the clubs, the power. The birthright my father exiled me from.
That’s the only reason.
The fact that she’s in Malus too, that’s incidental. Irrelevant. I have no intention of seeking her out. No hope that anything between us could ever be salvageable. She made her feelings clear five years ago, and I’ve accepted them.
I have.
“How would you all feel about going to America?” I ask my men.
They exchange glances around the table, cigarettes frozen halfway to their lips.
“When?” Paulo asks.
I stand and leave money on the table.
“Now.”
Rain streaks downthe windows of the Montoni mansion. It’s been raining practically since I arrived. Gray skies, gray streets, gray faces. Italy had golden light that made even violence seem beautiful. Here, the coldness in my heart pervades the stone, the air, the people.
I stand at my father’s study window, hands deep in my pockets, watching the rain running down the glass. My study now, though I still struggle to think about it that way. Every time I sit behind the mahogany desk, I expect to see Dad’s shadow looming in the doorway, his body clenched in threat and his face in darkness.
The ghosts in this house are relentless.
I’ve been back in Malus for five weeks. Five weeks of consolidating power and reminding men twice my age that I’m their don now, and they will kneel or they will bleed. The Montoni empire is vast, most of the northeast of Malus, and my father’s untimely death means that his enemies—that bastard had so many enemies—are circling like sharks who smell blood in the water. I’m putting out fires with the Dervishis in the north and the Sokolis in the south. Or at least I’m trying. Some days I feel like I’m pouring gasoline on those problems instead.
I’ve worked eighteen-hour days. I’ve made examples of men who thought the young don would be easy to manipulate. I’ve pushed back incursions on my territory.
And I feel nothing.
No satisfaction. No pride. No sense of accomplishment. Just the same cold emptiness that followed me from Italy.
My gaze catches on a gouge in the wooden bookcase. Deep and deliberate. The kind of mark that doesn’t fade.
I know what will happen if I touch it. The memory will surge up and drown me in it. Yet my hand moves toward the scar anyway. I reach out and touch it, as though I’m hungry for the pain. As though I deserve to choke on it.
